Chapter Two

Tom, Harry, Danny and Dougie just stared at the strange girl who had suddenly appeared at the back door of their van. They were still in shock from the events that had occurred within the walls of No'go City; from being taken to see the Queen and being forced to perform for her, to actually fighting her cronies and finally the Queen herself in order to escape with some water, and their lives. Then the sudden sandstorm and falling through the seemingly solid earth into this tunnel, which they had no doubt were connected with the arrival of this girl, was too much for them to take in.

"What part of run don't you understand?" the girl said, before jumping in the van and hauling Dougie to his feet, pushing him out the door.

"Ow!" Dougie cried as he landed hard on his backside. "Why should we run? How do we know you're not with old Queen Blue Hair up there?"

The girl looked at Dougie with a stern expression, her eyes looking older than she did. "I have two answers for you. One: Something very nasty is about to come after us, and two..." she pushed Danny out of the van, who managed to stay on his feet. Tom and Harry had got the message and made their own way out of the vehicle. "If I was with that bitch you should be running from me anyway. Now stop asking stupid questions and follow me."

"Wait!" Tom called to the girl. "Why should we follow you? Dougie's right, we don't know who you are; you could be a spy for all we know! And what about our van?"

The girl sighed in exasperation. "We haven't got time for all these questions, you just have to trust me if you want to live. As for your van..."

She made a motion with her right hand, and the van disappeared under a sudden rockfall.

"You crushed our van!" Danny yelled in distress. The girl just laughed.

"I didn't crush it, it's just buried. I can retrieve it easily enough for you but right now we have to..."

But her next instruction was lost as a great roar echoed through the tunnel. The four boys looked down the tunnel in fear; whatever had made that noise was big and sounded hungry.

"Shit," the girl swore. "We've run out of time, just hide as best you can and let me take care of things."

"But what are you going to do?" Harry asked, and the girl answered him with a sharp flick of her right arm; a vicious looking knife slid out from under her sleeve over her hand which she had balled into a fist. In her left hand a ball of fire had appeared.

"Hopefully this time I'll kill it."

Another roar filled the tunnel, as the boys cowered by the pile of rocks that concealed their van, and the girl stood defiantly facing the creature that appeared before her. It was huge, at least fifty feet long and its great body almost filled the tunnel, which wasn't exactly small. It looked like a giant snake, although once it had had legs, but they had been expertly removed by the girl's knife some years before. The creature seemed to be coping well without its limbs however.

"Hello, Wyrmie," the girl said, just a hint of fear in her otherwise steady voice.

The Wyrm looked down at the girl, its yellow eyes slit like a cat's, and for the briefest of moments this terrible monster seemed to balk before her, but then it opened its monstrous mouth to reveal razor sharp teeth dripping with venom. It reared back, snarling, and the girl threw the ball of fire she was holding right into its open maw; the creature roared in pain, while the girl darted towards the beast and drew her knife across its chest. Dark blood sputtered from the wound but the Wyrm barely flinched. The girl jumped onto the creature's back and began climbing up its neck. She had made a mistake; she had done this so many times fighting the Wyrm that it had learned her moves, and before she was out of reach of its teeth it swung round to bite her in two. The girl felt the beast move, and gasped in fear, slashing wildly with her blade. She struck the Wyrm in the eye, blinding it, but the monster had hit its target too. She instinctively grasped her right shoulder where the Wyrm had managed to sink in a venomous tooth, and in doing so she fell from its back, almost ten feet to land winded on the floor. Harry, who had been watching the fight unfold with horror, suddenly found some courage and ran out from his hiding place, the others yelling at him to stop. But he ignored their protests; he had to get the girl away from the Wyrm, which was thrashing around in pain. He ducked beneath the beast and put his arms under the girl's shoulders and pulled her back to the safety of the rocks. She screamed in pain as soon as he put pressure on her right shoulder, so he tried not to pull so hard from that side. Once they were safely out of the beast's way the four boys and the injured girl watched as the Wyrm continued to writhe in pain; it was trying pathetically to rub its eye with its useless limbs. Eventually it seemed to decide it was beaten, and retreated back down the tunnel the way it had came.

Tom let out the breath he hadn't realised he'd been holding. "Has it gone for good, do you think?"

"No," the girl shook her head. "I just pissed it off. It'll be back. We have to get out of here now."

"But how?" Danny said stupidly. "Even if our van wasn't buried it won't run for more than a few meters. And where are we going to go?"

"I know a place we can go, and I can fix your van." She looked up at the boys with blue-grey eyes. "You just have to trust me."

"Of course," Harry answered automatically. Tom, Danny, Dougie and the girl looked at him in surprise. She studied Harry for a moment; like all the boys, and her, he had a dirty face, it came from living rough, but he still looked handsome, his blue eyes shining with sincerity and concern for her. His dark hair was styled into a short Mohawk, and he wore an old grey sweatshirt, combat trousers and boots. She realised she was staring at him, and quickly looked away as she flushed red.

"What do you mean 'of course'?" Tom said as he took Harry aside, while Danny wrapped his scarf around the girl's shoulder.

"Tom, she saved our lives, twice," Harry argued. "We owe her, and she's hurt. The very least we can do is take her to get help."

"But what if she leads us back to No'go or the Water People?"

Harry looked Tom dead in the eye. "If she was going to do that, would she really have risked her life fighting that creature?"

Tom didn't have an answer for his friend; he could see his point and see that he wasn't going to win this argument. "Alright, we trust her. But only until we can get her help, after that she's on her own."

Harry nodded in agreement, and as he walked past Tom to rejoin the others Tom whispered in his ear. "Be careful Harry; don't go losing your head over this girl. We don't know who she is and there's something about her that unnerves me."

"You are such a worry-wort, Tom. I'm only looking out for a fellow human being; I'm not losing my head over her."

As Tom and Harry came back to the main group the girl was standing, supported by Danny, and making another gesture with her hand; the rocks that had covered the van fell away from the vehicle and rolled across the ground to partially block the tunnel from where the Wyrm had appeared. Dougie caught hold of the girl as Danny almost threw her to the floor as he ran to embrace the van.

"Oh my darling, I thought you were crushed for sure!" he cried, unaware the girl was looking at him as if he were mad. The boys were used to Danny's affection for the van by now; being a mechanic the van had almost become like a daughter to Danny. At least that was how protective of it he was.

"So, before we head off on some wild goose-chase," Tom began rather rudely, "Would you be so kind as to tell us your name?"

The girl smiled and offered her hand. "It's Emma. And would you be so kind as to introduce yourselves?"